Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has allotted a spectrum of bandwidth in the 60 GHz frequency range (57 to 64 GHz). The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) is targeting the standardization of this frequency band that will support data transmission rates up to 7 Gbps. Integrated circuits, formed in semiconductor die, offer high frequency operation in this millimeter wavelength range of frequencies. Some of these integrated circuits utilize Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS), Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) or GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) technology to form the dice in these designs. This standard is called the IEEE 802.11ad protocol.
The transmit path of the signal being, transferred in the wireless channel in these communication system need to be compensated for various mismatch conditions occurring in the up-convertor circuit. Some of these conditions manifests as LO leakage and signal image in the transmitter RF signal spectrum.
CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) is the primary technology used to construct, integrated circuits. N-channel transistors and P-channel transistors (MOS transistor) are used in this technology which uses fine line technology to consistently reduce the channel length of the MOS transistors. Current channel lengths are 40 nm, the power supply of VDD equals 1.2V and the number of layers of metal levels can be 8 or more.
CMOS offers the computing power to perform many of the required compensation techniques to overcome the adverse conditions in the transceiver. Yet, the computing power must be used in a power efficient manner to insure that the dissipated power is low enough to allow these important building blocks of the transceiver fabricated in CMOS to be used in mobile applications. This helps to insure that the energy drawn from the limited power contained in the battery is minimized while achieving the optimum performance.